Are You Starting a Beverage Company?
Learn how to start your new beverage company and save one year in time and up to $100,000 worth of mistakes
Starting your beverage company is easy if you have the correct formula. After speaking with more than 1,000 beverage companies I recognized patters of what makes a beverage company successful. These points are the secrets to making your beverage company succeed. Only they are not really secrets, they are easy to learn, understand and follow; only most entrepreneurs don’t follow these steps and fail in the first year.
What are the beverage company secrets?
No. 1 Beverage Company Secret = Start at the end
Yes, you read correctly. The no. 1 beverage company secret is to start at the end. What does this mean? Well, it means you don’t start at the beginning. In other words, you have your idea for a new beverage; you start working on the formula and the artwork right? Wrong! That’s starting at the beginning not at the end.
You need to start at the end, with your end consumer. You need to ask yourself who is your perfect consumer, where do they buy product, how much are they willing to spend for product and how much will they buy. After you answer all these questions you go back to the retailer and the distributor asking the same questions… How much will the retailer make? How much will the distributor make? Where do I found these beverage retailers and distributors? How do I support these beverage companies and how much money do I need?
After you have all these questions answered correctly as well as pricing information and strategy you go back to the beginning and start with your beverage flavor, package and artwork. Do you need help with this to build your beverage company? Contact me about my beverage consulting packages.
No. 2 Beverage Company Secret = Save Money
This could be a weird point in the beverage company and beverage development creation process but it is really not. I’m basing my information based not only at all the companies I speak with but all the companies subscribed to my newsletters, currently more than 20,000.
I see the same mistake over and over again. A beverage company will spend too much money. They spend too much in artwork, in beverage development; they spend in production and in promotions. The largest expenditures are in production and promotion. Many companies spend money in promotions thinking public relations or advertising will bring those sales. It will not. To get sales you have to call distributors and open retail accounts, not spend money in advertising.
The other large expenditure is beverage production. A beverage company will produce more than the minimum quantity just to save a few dimes. The problem is that they assume they will be able to sell that entire new inventory in the first year and they can’t. This is a matter of the suppliers selling the beverage company much more than what they need to get started. Now they have 10,000 cases in the warehouse and they will expire soon. I’ve seen up to 50,000 cases expire! That’s half a million dollars down the drain.
No. 3 Beverage Company Secret = Don’t rely on the distributor
This is the easiest secret to understand but the hardest one to accept. Almost every beverage company thinks once they open a distributor their job is over in that territory. That is wrong. Once you open a distributor your job now is to go into that territory and open accounts for your distributor. The distributor will not go on their own and open accounts for you, you have to do it for them.
Remember, it is your job to open distributors, to open retail accounts and to make sure the retailer sells out of product using sampling events or other sales activities.
If you need help starting and running your beverage company fill out the contact form and ask for my consulting packages.
Make sure you call our consulting hotline at 1 (619) 489 0230 to start your product development project